Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Monday, March 7th, 2022
This is not a review of the 1992 Hong Kong FULL CONTACT starring Chow Yun Fat and directed by Ringo Lam. It’s a review of the 1993 American FULL CONTACT starring Jerry Trimble (THE MASTER, TERMINATOR WOMAN) and directed by Rick Jacobson (BLACKBELT, BLACK THUNDER, DRAGON FIRE, Ash vs Evil Dead). There’s no specific reason why FULL CONTACT has to be the title for this one, so they should’ve gone with something else, but they did not. And we need not stress about that which we cannot control.
It’s a movie I bought on VHS years ago – I think it must’ve been when I was doing “The Super-Kumite,” my tournament of tournament fighting movies. But the team I assigned it to must’ve been out of contention, so I never watched it.
But it happens to be one of the early movies of Michael Jai White, back when he was still Michael White. After THE TOXIC AVENGER PARTs II and III he had tiny parts in TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE (uncredited), TRUE IDENTITY, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, and then this. So I chose this to be another tangent in my TOXIC AVENGER review series. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Beverly Gray, Denise Buick, Gerry Blanck, Hiro Koda, Jerry Trimble, Joe Charles, Marcus Aurelius, Matthew Willig, Michael Jai White, Michele "Mouse" Krasnoo, Raymond Storti, Rick Jacobson, Robert King, Sun Tzu
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2022
FISTFUL OF VENGEANCE is a new Netflix movie that’s a sequel to the show Wu Assassins. I think I watched two episodes of the show. It stars and is produced and choreographed by the great Iko Uwais, so it had good fights, and it was cool seeing him have a good lead role even speaking English. I also liked the idea of this kind of fantasy in a modern urban world of Triads and stuff. But I spend so much time reviewing movies I have a hard time watching whole shows, and the complicated mythology kinda lost me. Still, I decided to give the movie a shot, and thankfully the references to events from the show are not confusing. It works as a stand alone.
Uwais plays Kai, who on the show was a chef who found out he was a supernatural chosen one called a Wu Assassin who has to kill some magic warlords or whatever. I remember that he would turn into Mark Dacascos sometimes at the beginning of the show, but that doesn’t happen here. He works with a non-supernatural badass named Lu Xin (Lewis Tan, TRUE VENGEANCE, DEADPOOL 2, Into the Badlands, MORTAL KOMBAT) and a smartass former Triad guy named Tommy (Lawrence Kao, MAX STEEL, HONEY: RISE UP AND DANCE) to, I guess fight supernatural threats or something. In the opening scene Kai and Lu Xin are strutting into a cool dance club while Tommy is on a rooftop having champagne with a woman and boasting about himself and his friends, providing us the exposition that they’re trying to find out who killed his sister Jenny. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Francesca Corney, Iko Uwais, Jason Tobin, Juju Chan, Lawrence Kao, Lewis Tan, Netflix, Pearl Thusi, Roel Reine, Yayaying Rhatha Phongam
Posted in Action, Fantasy/Swords, Martial Arts, Reviews | 19 Comments »
Wednesday, February 16th, 2022
THE SWORD IDENTITY is a 2011 period martial arts movie that’s the debut of writer/director Xu Haofeng, based on his own book. He’s directed a few more movies since then and notably wrote THE GRANDMASTER for Wong Kar Wai. I adore that movie and all its poetic musings about kung fu styles and secret moves, so I tried this one out and, though it’s in many ways THE GRANDMASTER’s stylistic opposite, I was not disappointed.
From the title I guessed it would be kind of a sword forensics thing. Maybe someone recognizes a famous sword in someone’s hand and has to learn of its history to identify the person or solve some mystery about them. It could also just be Jason Bourne with swords, which I would also be down for. It’s closer to the first option. It’s sort of about a sword causing a mistaken identity. When two men come into the town of Guancheng carrying swords of an unusual design they are mistaken for Japanese pirates, causing a citywide ruckus. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ma Jun, Song Yang, swords, Xu Fujing, Xu Haofeng, Yao Wei-Ping, Yu Chenghui
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Thursday, January 13th, 2022
After his horror breakthrough, his failed comedy, and his knockout horror sequel, Sam Raimi finally made it to the semi-big-time. He’d really wanted to do a movie of Batman or The Shadow, but could never get the rights. Then he came up with the idea for his own dark avenger, one with the ability to change his face. His 40-page treatment The Darkman was greenlit by Universal Studios in 1987.
Raimi brought in NAVY SEALS writer Chuck Pfarrer to flesh out the treatment as a screenplay, which was then rewritten by Raimi and his brother Ivan (under the theory that Ivan, a doctor, could help make the medical sci-fi aspects plausible). The studio brought in the team of Daniel and Joshua Goldin (up-and-comers they also had working on PROBLEM CHILD) to bring the various drafts together before the Raimis went at it again. By the time the movie was made and released at the end of August, 1990, Tim Burton had made his BATMAN movie and all the studios were trying to mimic that success. Surely that was an influence on Raimi’s choice of composer Danny Elfman, and on the minimalist marketing campaign based around a silhouette and the question “Who is Darkman?”
I’m sure at the time I would’ve been interested in this movie anyway, but I was specifically excited when I read that it was the genius behind beloved video favorite EVIL DEAD II taking his first shot at a large scale mainstream movie. Seeing the posters, reading about it in magazines, seeing it on the big screen, I accepted it as a big time summer blockbuster alongside DICK TRACY, BACK TO THE FUTURE III and DIE HARD 2. But Raimi having four times his budget on EVIL DEAD II still meant about a third or a fourth of the budgets of those films. Even Cannon’s DELTA FORCE 2, released the same day as DARKMAN, had a slightly higher budget. I think it’s a testament to Raimi’s exciting directorial style that his many green screen and miniature techniques, which have dated technically more than any of those other movies, still seemed flashy enough to stand toe-to-toe with them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Arsenio "Sonny" Trinidad, Bill Pope, Chiodo Brothers, Chuck Pfarrer, Colin Friels, Danny Elfman, Frances McDormand, Jenny Agutter, John Landis, Julius Harris, Larry Drake, Liam Neeson, Nelson Mashita, Nicholas Worth, Rafael H. Robledo, Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi, Tony Gardner, William Lustig
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 23 Comments »
Tuesday, January 4th, 2022
I had been pretty excited for SNAKE EYES: G.I. JOE ORIGINS, but I was skeptical about director Robert Schwentke (R.I.P.D.) so when it came out and everybody said the action scenes were unwatchable I put off seeing it. I don’t know if the tempering of expectations helped, but catching up with it on video I found it was pretty much the enjoyable studio b-movie I had been hoping for.
Maybe there’s a better word for that, but it’s a category I appreciate: mainstream studio theatrical releases with huge budgets compared to the DTV stuff we love, but without any expectations of either being giant hits or critical successes. Unpretentious, crassly commercial movies, sometimes seemingly out of touch with what is considered cool at the moment, all generally seen as lowbrow also-rans, whether or not their creators had higher aspirations. Stuff like non-FAST Vin Diesel movies, most of the video game and/or Milla Jovovich movies, fantasy sword guy movies, Rob Cohen and P.W.S. Anderson movies. I know not to hold them to my normally stringent artistic standards and just hope for a satisfying mix of pretty cool, kinda stupid, hopefully excessive in some goofy way, maybe in some ways better than most people were gonna give them credit for. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Koji, Anna Waterhouse, based on a toy, Bojan Bazelli, Eri Ishida, Evan Spiliotopoulos, Haruka Abe, Hasbro, Henry Golding, Iko Uwais, Joe Shrapnel, Kenji Tanigaki, Peter Mensah, Robert Schwentke, Samara Weaving, Steven Allerick, Takehiro Hira, Ursula Corbero
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 32 Comments »
Wednesday, December 29th, 2021
“I’m sorry. How could I know this would happen?”
“We didn’t understand all of it back then. No more than we do now.”
(you have entered THE SPOILERTRIX)
When I saw the first trailer for THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, it wasn’t what I expected. That is to say that it seemed like the sort of thing you would expect from a normal 2020s “legacy sequel” to an old series: bringing back some of the original stars, addressing that they are older now, stripping away some of the excesses of previous sequels, visually and otherwise referencing famous scenes specifically from the first movie. Which is all fine and good, but I figured they must be hiding something, because I didn’t believe Lana Wachowski (working without Lilly, who wanted to take time away from the industry) would come back to THE MATRIX after 18 years just to do something normal. I was betting on her having come up with some weird approach that even if I didn’t like it very much I would respect, as was the case with CLOUD ATLAS and JUPITER ASCENDING.
RESURRECTIONS might be the most accessible movie a Wachowski has made since the original MATRIX, but I don’t think I was wrong. This is a filmmaker making the movie she wants to and not what she thinks anyone else wants, therefore ending up with something no one else would’ve made. And I’m happy to say that I more than respected it. I kind of loved it. Though I wasn’t sure at first. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Caldwell, Carrie-Anne Moss, Chad Stahelski, Christina Ricci, Daniele Massaccesi, Erendira Ibarra, Jada Pinkett Smith, Jessica Henwick, John Toll, Jonathan Eusebio, Jonathan Groff, Joshua Grothe, Keanue Reeves, meta, Neil Patrick Harris, Scott Rogers, Tiger Hu Chen, video games, Wachowskis, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
Posted in Action, Reviews, Romance, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 68 Comments »
Monday, December 20th, 2021
COPSHOP is the latest smart-alecky, artfully lowbrow violencefest from director Joe Carnahan (rewriting a script credited to Canadian financial advisor Kurt McLeod, story by Mark Williams [HONEST THIEF]). I tend to like Carnahan’s work more than dislike it, and I like that he seems to have settled on Frank Grillo (THE GREY) as his main guy and gotten a little better grip on the collar of that SMOKIN’ ACES chaos he likes to set loose. In both this and last year’s time-loop movie BOSS LEVEL Carnahan has found a good balance between the macho rowdiness, the cleverness and touches of sentimentality, and given Grillo a good sleazy-likable-asshole-antihero-fuckup to play.
I guess he’s more anti and less hero in this one. It’s clearly a modern western, and if it’s THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY he sure ain’t the good. But his main motivation throughout the movie is to warn his ex-wife and daughter that they’re in danger, so how could we completely hate him? He plays Teddy Murretto, a Vegas (or Reno?) fixer on the run with a bag of something valuable. On foot with time running out, enemies closing in and nowhere to go, he punches a random cop so that he can hide out in a jail cell. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexis Louder, Chad L. Coleman, contemporary western, Frank Grillo, Gerard Butler, Joe Carnahan, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Kurt McLeod, Ryan O'Nan, Toby Huss, Tracey Bonner
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews | 15 Comments »
Thursday, December 16th, 2021
When the second half of the 2-part MATRIX sequel begins, our hero Neo and antagonist Agent Smith are both displaced from their regular realities. Smith has somehow transferred his computer-program-consciousness into the organic human body of Bane, only survivor of the destroyed Nebuchadnezzar, now in the sick bay of the Hammer next to comatose Neo, whose mind is trapped in a purgatorial subway station in a virtual world separate from The Matrix.
Yeah, the sequels get complicated. We learn that programs inside The Matrix are regularly deleted, but some try to escape that fate. The subway is a black market means of smuggling exile programs in and out of the Matrix or the Machine City (01?) mainframe. This is all overseen by the Merovingian, with the subway itself operated by his employee The Trainman, a scary dude played by Bruce Spence, a.k.a. the Gyro Captain in THE ROAD WARRIOR and Jedediah in MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bernard White, Bruce Spence, Carrie-Anne Moss, Collin Chou, Hugo Weaving, Ian Bliss, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Mary Alice, Monica Bellucci, Wachowskis, Yuen Woo-Ping
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 20 Comments »
Wednesday, December 15th, 2021
THE MATRIX RELOADED may have been the most highly anticipated but immediately rejected sequel of my lifetime. I’m not just excluding PHANTOM MENACE for being a prequel – whatever happened in the rest of the world, I honestly didn’t experience many people hating it until months later, at least. With RELOADED it was pretty instant.
It was the only MATRIX movie I reviewed upon release, so you can click here to see my kinda dumb, mostly still applicable 2003 thoughts on the matter. I seemed to be fielding a backlash against the original MATRIX movie as well as people hating RELOADED, but it was only the latter I found myself feeling I had to defend over the years.
I do think I partly understand why people were disappointed. THE MATRIX ends on a perfect note of letting us imagine what’s next in the “world where anything is possible.” Any definitive answer of what happens next has a hard time competing with the electric feeling of not knowing. Especially when part 1 was a carefully constructed machine of concept, explanation and payoff, while part 2 kind of wanders through a labyrinth of tangential notions and questions before it gets to the battle it’s been promising. And it cuts off in a cliffhanger well before said battle. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Zerbe, Carrie-Anne Moss, Cornel West, Daniel Bernhardt, Gina Torres, Gloria Foster, Harold Perrineau, Harry Lennix, Helmut Bakaitis, Hugo Weaving, Ian Bliss, Jada Pinkett Smith, Keanu Reeves, Lambert Wilson, Laurence Fishburne, Monica Belluci, Nathaniel Lees, Nona Gaye, Randall Duk Kim, Tiger Hu Chen, Wachowskis, Yuen Woo-Ping
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 31 Comments »
Monday, December 13th, 2021
THE MATRIX is, I continue to believe, one of The Great Movies. It absolutely holds up today, and also it reminds me so much of then. I will always remember what it felt like when this was a new movie, and our entire understanding of the MATRIX story. When we all imagined where it would go next, and then we had a couple years enjoying or rolling our eyes at all the movies obviously influenced by it, whether that means corny outfits and techno music or that brief, glorious window when Hollywood actors could be convinced to spend months preparing for action scenes with the great Hong Kong choreographers. But mostly I like to remember what it felt like to be surprised by it. Going in wondering if it would be good and then coming out knowing it was this.
I did have hopes. I had come to respect Keanu Reeves’ taste in movies after SPEED and, say what you will, JOHNNY MNEMONIC. I liked BOUND and it was exciting to see directors like that doing a sci-fi movie. And then a day or two before it came out I heard something about there being kung fu in it? So it wasn’t completely out of the blue that it was good. But I don’t think I was expecting something that a couple decades later would still be thought as highly of as the fucking MATRIX is. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Pope, Carrie-Anne Moss, Chad Stahelski, cyberpunk, Joe Pantoliano, Joel Silver, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Tiger Hu Chen, Wachowskis, Yuen Woo-Ping
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 58 Comments »
